


not quite like puzzle pieces

by Thunderhel



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), College AU, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, background hanbrough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderhel/pseuds/Thunderhel
Summary: Stanley Uris was a practical romantic, which meant, in short, that he was a realistic person with a reasonable if somewhat pessimistic outlook on the word at large, but quietly a romantic at heart. He knew whoever was destined to say his soulwords was going to be his perfect match in every way that mattered, and while that was a terrifying thought he could make his peace with it.However the drunkest guy at the party -wearing a Hawaiian shirt and screaming something about an orgy- was neither practical nor romantic, so Stan was rather unsure where that left them.Or, the Universe at large thinks it's very funny at the expense of two emotionally stunted college kids.
Relationships: Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	not quite like puzzle pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to **[Mel](https://spaghettieddies.tumblr.com/)** in honor of her birthday. She didn't ask for it but then again neither did anyone else. I don't have a solid posting schedule for this just yet but it's probably going to be about 6 or 7 chapters when it's all said and done.
> 
>  **Content Warnings** for well meaning but still very forward and aggressive drunken sexual advances.

_“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”_

It was, as far as soul words went, highly romantic. It was the kind of thing girls hoped to show up on their skin all through puberty before their words finally manifested. 

However Stanley Uris was not a girl, and therefore the sentiment caused a bit of a conundrum the day it appeared in a grey outline on his hip.

“They’re going to think you’re beautiful,” Bill had told him, trying to sound encouraging as he was obviously unsure about how Stan felt about the card fate had dealt him. 

Stan had been unsure himself. 

Someone would think Stan was beautiful, a concept which in and of itself was so strangely foreign that he couldn’t quite linger on it. They were also in the same breath going to call Stan a thing, which complicated the matter a bit. 

But he had steeled himself and caught his breath and accepted it all the same. Whoever it was was going to think Stan was beautiful and was going to be the kind of person who said what was on their mind. The kind to go after what they wanted one way or another, and Stan was going to fall in love with them. There was nothing to be nervous about. The universe would figure it out for him in the end. 

What he had failed to consider was that the universe did not care for Stanley Uris. 

In the grand scheme of everything Stan supposed that the universe cared for very few people individually. Something about entropy and the inevitable vastness of time and space, but he felt rather like the universe or God or whatever it was that was out there had a specific distaste for Stan in particular. Not strong enough for hate, not the kind that led one to violence or severe property damage, but more the kind of dissatisfaction with someone that made you go out of your way to make sure their day was just a little bit more unpleasant. 

“Fuck and they c-call me a bad writer,” Bill had scoffed at him when Stan had told him of this theory. 

Which Stan thought was unfair because Bill wasn’t a bad writer. He wouldn’t go so far as to call him _good_ , but bad was certainly an over exaggeration. And also it was unfair because Bill had been next to him for well over half of the roadblocks life had sent him, including but not limited to the day Bill had met his soulmate. 

It had been at the market, in between stalls of local fresh produce and baked goods. The universe hadn’t much cared that romantic comedies were Bill’s least favorite genre when it had thrown him right in the middle of the biggest cliche of all time. 

Stan had been the one to turn too fast and found himself slamming full body into someone just stepping out from behind a stall. The man had dropped at least a half dozen eggs on the ground in the scuffle and Stan had been beside himself in humiliation as he tried to apologize. 

When Stan had looked up -and up and up and up- he hadn’t been able to remember anything he had just said. 

The man standing with egg yolk staining his well worn jeans was looking down at Stan with wide brown eyes that in a shocking twist didn’t look angry at all. He looked, if Stan would be so bold in his own mind to admit it, a little shyly fond. Or maybe Stan was projecting and he was just stunned that a klutz he didn’t know had just ruined his clothes. 

“I can pay for that,” Stan had said weakly, arms at his sides as he had looked up at the person now warmly smiling down at him. Stan had already said his first words to this man. He looked around Stan’s age and while both Stan’s Bar Mitzvah and the United States of America said he was technically a man, he still wasn’t sure it was a title that suited him just yet. 

This guy though, he was a _man_. Even if he wasn’t any older than Stan and had the wide smile of a teenager. His shoulders were broad and he had a confidence about him that Stan didn’t think he could ever possess. 

The stranger covered in ruined eggs had smiled at him and the silence between them had really only been a second or two. Enough for Stan to be embarrassed and the man to consider the egg on his pants. It was long enough for Stan to have the thought he had had before and would have again. The traitorous thought that he lied to Bill’s face about on a weekly basis. That one little word that never let him rest whenever someone attractive so much as stood near him. 

_Maybe._

Because against his own will and best interest, Stan was a hopeless romantic, and all he wanted in the world was for someone to say his words. He could bury those feelings in as deep of a grave of projected apathy as he wanted but they would always claw their way back up like a zombie that ate hearts instead of brains any time someone new smiled at him. 

Fuck, he really was a worse writer than Bill. 

“It’s okay, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” 

And just as that horrible undead hand broke the surface of the cemetery dirt Stan was beating it back with a shovel, embarrassed at letting it get that far. Because those were not his words, and this cute stranger with the lopsided grin and the dark eyes was not his soulmate. 

“S-sorry Stanley decided to egg you, we’ve been t-trying to get him to be nicer,” Bill joked as he reappeared suddenly with a handful of napkins. 

The stranger’s attention was yanked so forcefully away from Stan that Stan felt himself flinch. Instead those big brown eyes were locked entirely on Bill now, ignoring the outstretched offering. Slowly, a grin began to spread back across his handsome face. “I’ll forgive him,” he said, his voice a deep and soft rumble that was filled with more fondness than Stan would have thought anyone capable of using and still sounding genuine. “As long as his cute friend helps me clean up.” 

Stan and Bill had inhaled at the same time, a tight and loud gasp that might have been funny had the situation not been so distracting. Bill’s eyes were the widest Stan had ever seen them, his jaw slack and the napkins forgotten in his hand. 

“It’s you,” Bill whispered. 

The stranger smiled. “And it’s you.” 

“Your soul words are about me,” Stan accused with a scowl. 

Bill had spared him only a quick glance as a blinding smile overtook his face, his eyes crinkling with the effort. 

“I’m Bill,” he introduced, and attempted to shake the stranger -his _soulmate’s_ \- hand with the one currently full of napkins. There was a flush high on his cheeks and Stan had felt somewhere between disgusted and delighted at the tooth rotting scene unfolding before him and at the absolute adoration on both of their faces. 

“I’m getting a crepe,” he announced as the two of them giggled while trying to recollect the napkins. 

“Oh, it was nice to meet you, Stanley!” Bill’s soulmate had called after him as he had disappeared into the crowd. 

He had gotten a crepe by himself both in honor of his best friend finally finding their other half and also privately in mourning for losing _his_ other half of misery. 

Stan learned later that Bill’s soulmate’s name was Mike. Bill had told him that night back at their shared apartment and then, much to Stan’s chagrin, had proceeded to reiterate the fact by moaning it through their shared bedroom wall at 2 in the morning. 

It had been almost to the day two years since Bill and Mike had found each other, or more aptly since Stan had found them _for_ each other, and a little less than a year and a half since Mike had officially moved in when everything went to Hell. 

Originally it wasn’t as terrible as everyone tried to make it seem, living as a single person with a pair. Not when Bill and Mike were relatively private with their affection and not when Stan loved them both so dearly. He had only had the misfortune of catching them _in flagranti_ twice, which to be fair was a third of the amount of times he had caught Bill by himself before Mike. 

So it generally worked out. They were quieter after the first week, with only the occasional suspicious creaking of springs to make Stan turn his fan up in the middle of the night. They were a perfect match, two people so suited for each other that Bill had always said it had felt like something had just clicked into place. Like everything had just shifted in the right moment and he had realized “ _oh, this is what it was all leaning towards_.”

Stan pretended he found that sentiment sappy and disgusting and Bill and Mike pretended to not see how desperate Stan was to find his own match. 

Almost two years to the day, and Stan’s entire life fell apart.

It all started with an innocent mistake.

He had only realized it was a mistake roughly 20 minutes into the party he had decided to crash as he stood alone along the wall, surrounded by people he didn’t know and barely recognized from around campus. It was a mistake to be at a party where he hardly knew anyone, but the kind of mistake that meant he would rather have been doing something else and probably looked like an awkward but harmless weirdo. It was a mistake he had made before in the name of trying to have a good time and would make again. But it wasn’t catastrophic. 

Not at first. 

He had elected to come to the party sans Mike and Bill, with a few accounting majors who didn’t mind that he wasn’t technically one of them but was still in a half dozen of their classes as he tried to fill out a minor to keep his parents happy. They were all gone now though, dispersed among the crowd of people to chat with whoever they knew that Stan didn’t. It wasn’t a rager, no where near in the threat level of the cops having to show up, but it was crowded enough that Stan didn’t stand out too much and he didn’t have any fear of the host trying to throw him out once they realized they didn’t know him. It was the kind of party where they definitely didn’t know everyone here.

He wasn’t the biggest fan of college parties, but he certainly had nothing against them. He had just wanted to get out of the apartment, to do anything that wasn’t sit next to Bill and Mike on the couch as they cuddled beside him or hide away in his room and pretend he wasn’t lonely. He loved them both but there was only so much sweetness he could take before he was going to get diabetes. 

Across the living room a small crowd was gathered around a group of three or four -it was difficult to tell who was the focal point and who was the audience- as some sort of scuffle was breaking out. It didn’t seem like a fight, everyone was too drunk with smiles and half hysterical laughter, but it didn’t seem like not a fight at the same time. A girl and a guy were half wrestling with each other, her high pitched complaints and peals of laughter lost in the beat of the music as the guy currently putting her in what looked like a gentle headlock was squawking loud enough to be heard. 

“I say, I say, Miss Scarlet you will be sentenced to ten years for your crimes!” The guy shouted in a horrible Foghorn Leghorn accent. 

She yelled something in return, smacking at his arms as he tried to lift her bodily into the air. Another member of their circle stepped in the way of Stan’s view just as the girl managed to free herself, which was just as well since Stan was in dire need of another drink. 

He turned his attention back to the kitchen, managing to easily dodge a few people as he made his way back to the concerningly lopsided table covered in at least two dozen half empty bottles of liquor. It was just as he was finishing mixing his second shitty rum and coke of the evening and considering calling it a night and heading home once his cup was empty, when he saw _Her_. 

It would have been a lie to say he hadn't hoped he would. Stan didn’t know if She was an accounting major or not, but She was in two of his classes and he had hoped that maybe, just maybe She knew the same people his friends did and would make an appearance.

He called her She because he had no idea what her name was. 

She sat two rows in front of him in accounting 201 and three in front of him in forensics and she was one of the most beautiful girls Stan had ever seen. She had light brown curls that framed a heart shaped face and the lightest dusting of freckles over her nose. Through no fault of her own she also was the sole reason over half of his notes for both classes made no sense. 

She was currently crouched down at the door to the back porch, holding a hand out and making cooing noises at a chubby tabby hiding between the garbage bins. She was alone, without any friends to watch Stan try to blunder his way through flirting. It was the best chance he was ever going to get, as long as he could keep his hands from sweating long enough to not drop his solo cup in front of her. 

“Are you the official cat wrangler for this party?” He asked before he could stop himself or overthink it. “Because you’re doing a terrible job.” 

She turned her head to him sharply, one hand still outstretched towards the cat as she blinked up at him. Her eyes were huge, and Stan felt something in his chest swoop at having her full attention on him. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t really about how pretty he thought she was, was it? It was about how pretty she found him. 

Confusion clouded her face for only a moment before he watched her cycle through what seemed like several different emotions all at once. Finally, a small smile graced her pretty face and she let her hand drop as she stood up. The top of her head barely reached his chin. 

“You know, my words actually have the word cat in them, so I might have a problem.” 

Stan had known it wasn’t her. He didn’t know her at all, but he knew she wasn’t the type of person to say something so bold and borderline obnoxious at a first meeting. Knowing that still didn’t stop the drop of disappointment from settling in the bottom of his heart. He had no capacity to evaluate another person enough to be certain, but he thought maybe she seemed a little disappointed too. 

“How far off was I?” He asked as he pushed the disappointment aside. “Maybe I can try again?” 

She laughed, a beautiful and delicate sound that he wanted to drown in. “If that was how it worked, I might let you try.” 

She wasn’t his soulmate, they weren’t destined to be together, but she was pretty and she was flirting back with him and Stan wasn’t a monk so that was good enough for now. “I’m Stan,” he introduced, and when she extended her hand he shook it. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you Stan, I’m Patty.” 

Patty turned out to also be an accounting minor, majoring in English Literature. She spoke Russian and attended the Synagogue downtown that Stan lied to his parents about going to. She had two cats back at her apartment and she liked strawberries but was allergic to mangoes, and when she had to crowd a little closer to Stan to let someone pass behind her, she didn’t move back away. 

He had no idea how much time had passed before she was apologizing through a yawn about how she had to leave. Stan was just about to ask if he could walk her home when the real commotion began. 

Stan only had time to get one word out before a gaggle of people were stumbling from the living room into the kitchen, shouting over one another to be heard. He recognized them as the group that had been just as rowdy in the living room. The girl and guy who had been wrestling had separated, now both hanging off a different member of opposite sex as they continued to argue about something. 

The lighting was brighter in the kitchen, and Stan could make them both out a little better even as Patty pressed herself closer against his side to give them space. The girl from earlier, Miss Scarlet as she had been called, had soft red hair in close choppily cropped curls and was gesturing wildly with hands covered in rings. She seemed to be supported almost entirely by the meathead looking jock holding her upright. The guy she had been wrestling with was also leaning on his partner, a tiny blonde who seemed more hair than girl who was giggling uncontrollably every time one of his long limbs knocked into something. 

The guy was only a few inches taller than Stan, but he had to be twice as skinny and it made everything about him just seem longer. Like a foal that hadn’t quite figured out how to move yet. His curls were dark and wild, a mane around his face, falling in front of his eyes and making his wide manic smile seem that much more menacing. His jeans looked at least a size too large as they hung low on his sharp hip bones and he was wearing a horrendously bright hawaiian shirt completely open over his bare chest. There were lipsticks marks of varying shades running up his neck and over his collarbone, leading to something written on his chest, presumably also in lipstick. 

When he whipped around, dragging the giggling blonde with him, Stan saw what was written was ‘ _Pussy Magnet_ ’. 

Against his side Patty giggled a little helplessly. 

“Fuck you!” Pussy Magnet was yelling at the meathead, looking absolutely delighted as well as thoroughly trashed. “It’s my house and I can have an orgy if I fucking want!” He emphasized his point by throwing his free arm not currently around the blonde out wide, throwing both of them off balance. It all happened in slow motion. 

The guy went sideways as the girl fell away from him, his hip checking into the already precarious table and sending it wobbling. 

Stan moved without thinking about it, jumping forward to grab the other end of the table before it could tip over. A few bottles hit the floor but Stan didn’t hear anything shatter so he assumed the damage wasn’t too bad. 

Pussy Magnet grabbed the wall to stop himself from completely falling over, laughing at himself all the while. 

Miss Scarlet cheered, throwing her arms up in the air. She pointed one finger at Pussy Magnet. “Party fucking FOUL, Pussy Magnet!” She pointed both hands at Stan as he let the table shift back into place. “And it’s the goddamn savior of the party over here!” A few members of her group cheered, and Stan felt his face burning red as Patty joined in, clapping almost as loud as Miss Scarlet. 

“What’s he get for saving it?” Someone yelled.

“Oh no, I don’t-”

“Here!” Miss Scarlet was suddenly fighting rather violently with the straps of her romper. “I’ve got it.”

“Bev, stop trying to flash everyone!”

“No, it’s okay,” she insisted as the meathead was moving in again, redoing the strap she had managed to shrug out of it. “It’s an emergency this time.”

“No it’s not.” 

“I don’t need anything,” Stan tried to frantically assure her. “You can, uh, keep your clothes on.” 

He could feel his face burning, but it didn’t feel like humiliation. There was something light in his chest as he heard Patty laughing behind him, the other party goers raising their drinks in his honor as someone grabbed a fallen bottle off of the floor to chug straight from it. It was a strange sort of high, actually fitting in at a party after flirting with a pretty girl as another rather pretty girl had to be talked down from flashing him. 

It all went downhill so fast. 

Stan turned his attention back to Pussy Magnet himself, still leaning against the wall for support, and Stan found himself looking right into the guy’s dark brown eyes. Or at least one of them. His hair was still kind of in the way. Stan thought he looked a bit like a cartoon bully that was obviously supposed to be high but the censors wouldn’t allow that to be said outright. His smile was so wide it seemed impossible and his mouth was stained with lipstick and soda. There was dirt on his cheek. Stan felt all at once like a mouse under the gaze of a particularly playful cat. 

Pussy Magnet cocked his head to the side and his grin became even wider as he dropped his voice down into what was possibly the worst British accent Stan had ever heard. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” 

All at once all the sound in the room seemed to dampen. Bev was still fighting with the meathead and Patty was still laughing and the blonde clinging to Pussy Magent’s arm was chittering something with her lipstick smeared mouth, but Stan couldn’t hear any of it. Maybe he had gone deaf. Maybe he’d accidentally drank something that had acid in it. Maybe he was tripping. Because a man with dirt on his face and hickies on his neck and Pussy Magnet written across his chest couldn’t have just said his words. 

But he could feel it, could feel the burn on his hip that told him it wasn’t an accident, not a fluke or a mistake. His words had been said and if he looked right now he knew they would be a dark inky black, and not the soft grey he had seen every day of his life since he was 13. 

His tongue felt too big in his mouth and it took a moment for him to remember how to move it again. “I beg your pardon?” He asked in the deafening silence of the room that seemed to only be affecting him. 

Pussy Magnet’s eyebrows were arched, just barely visible under the mop of his hair, but when Stan finally found his voice they dropped, the mania on his face wiped clean so fast that it might have been funny. As it was, Stan wasn’t sure he would ever find anything funny ever again. His eyes went wide, and then he was pushing a large hand -which looked to be the source of the dirt on his face- through his hair, pushing it up off his forehead to stare directly at Stan . His other hand let go of the blonde to grab harshly at his own upper arm, and Stan realized with a horrible jolt to his chest what he was grabbing. 

“ _I beg your pardon_?” Had to be written in Stan’s tight and neat script beneath that obnoxious print.

“Holy FUCK,” Pussy Magnet gasped as Bev said something that sounded like “ _Chee_ ” and then he was moving. 

For a drunk he moved a lot faster than Stan was prepared for, pushing his way through the crowd with a grace Stan wouldn’t have guessed possible and then he was in his space, his nose almost brushing Stan’s and making him go cross-eyed as he tried to look at him. His back hit the wall when he tried to stumble away, but Pussy Magnet - his _soulmate_ \- was having none of it as he followed him, one hand coming up to rest against the wall beside Stan’s head as his other hand was suddenly and without warning on Stan’s face. His fingers were uncomfortably sticky against Stan’s skin, tangling in the curls he had spent thirty minutes that day wrangling into place and Stan was reminded suddenly of the dirt he had seen under the other man’s nails and on the pads of his fingers as they brushed against his ear. A jolt of something ran through his body, but it wasn’t the pleasant spike he had felt when Patty had brushed against his arm. 

Pussy Magent’s breath was hot and smelled of vodka and cheese puffs and Stan shut his mouth tight to not try to invite it in. 

“It’s you,” he breathed against Stan’s lips as Stan remained frozen under his gaze. It was the same line everyone always said, the one Stan had envisioned himself saying one day as he stared into the eyes of the person he would be with forever. 

He didn’t open his mouth. 

The hand beside his head was suddenly gone, replaced by an arm looping around his neck and Pussy Magnet was dragging him away from the wall, nearly knocking Patty out of the way as he spun them around so Stan was tucked tight against his side as they faced the small crowd in the kitchen. 

“THIS IS MY FUCKING SOULMATE!” He screamed at the other party goers and directly into Stan’s left ear. 

Everyone was yelling all at once then, Bev became even more frantic in trying to get her romper off for some reason and Pussy Magnet had Stan in a vice grip around his shoulders. He couldn’t move, frozen in place under all of the attention. 

All of his life, Stan had hated people touching him. It had taken years before he was comfortable with Bill’s leg pressed up against his on the couch, and even with the few romantic partners he’d had, everything had gone so slow. Everyone, from his parents to his health teachers to Bill and Mike had assured him meeting his soulmate wouldn’t feel like that. It would feel like his puzzles he liked to do, like fitting two pieces together in perfect harmony.

This felt more like a child trying to force two jigsaw pieces that didn’t even come from the same box together. 

Pussy Magnet turned to look at him, their noses almost pressed against each other again as he pulled Stan closer, looming over him so Stan was almost being dipped. “You’re so fucking pretty, I’m gonna do so many things to you,” he told Stan, one hand waving to the side to theoretically emphasize his point as Stan stared at him with wide eyes. “Just, fucking...everything. Anything you want, I’m down. Holy shit your ass is amazing.” 

Around them the party was laughing and wolf whistling and Stan felt his face burning in humiliation at the realization that they had all just heard that. At least Pussy Magnet had the decency to lean in close, his wet mouth pressed against Stan’s ear when he spoke again. “I want you to sit on my fucking face.”

“WHAT!?” Stan couldn’t stop himself from yelping out loud, his voice an octave higher than he had ever heard it and around him he could hear nothing but laughter. Laughter at his expense. 

Pussy Magnet tugged on his hand, pulling him a step in the direction of the living room, dragging him to the center of the room and around them the party got impossibly louder in excitement. Stan planted his heels on the tile floor, leaning back against the grip on his arm. For all his exuberance, the guy didn’t seem to have a very strong grip. “Wait! No, wait!” Pussy Magnet stopped, his smile still wild and wide. Stan needed to call his fucking _soulmate_ something other than Pussy Magnet this was ridiculous. “What is your name?” He demanded, sounding helpless even to his own ears. 

“PUSSY MAGNET!” Someone shouted and his soulmate grinned, throwing his arms out without letting go of Stan’s hand.

“I’m Pussy Magnet, baby!” The words were smeared now and Stan realized they were smeared because they had been pressed against his chest. There was probably lipstick on his button down. There was also probably dirt on his face from where Pussy Magnet, which was apparently the only name he was going to get out of him, had touched his face. 

“Get it Tozier!” Someone shouted.

Bev was shouting something and Pussy Magnet -Tozier?- was waggling those eyebrows again and maybe it was the way he called him baby or maybe it was the way his eyes suddenly dropped down to Stan’s mouth with an unmistakable intent that finally made Stan come back into his body. When Pussy Magnet leaned down, one sticky hand on Stan’s face and his eyes falling closed, Stan ducked. 

The laughter around them was ringing in his ears and Stan had no idea how many people were actually laughing or how loud it really was but it was all he could hear. The insinuations about his sex life and the wolf whistles and the jeers were flying and Stan, who had been a private person his entire life, was at his breaking point. 

His soulmate didn’t seem detered by his ducking, laughing out loud and swaying to the side in drunken exuberance over the situation. 

“Richie,” someone was yelling. No, not just someone, Meathead, who Stan was just now realizing might have been the only sober one of the group. He was also the only member of Pussy Magnet’s group who didn’t seem entertained by the display. “Richie, man, I think you-”

Pussy Magnet, no Richie - _Richie, his soulmate’s name was Richie_ \- had a hand around each of Stan’s wrists as Stan backed as far away as Richie would let him. “Fuck, your mouth is pretty,” Richie bemoaned, eyes even darker than before as he fixated on Stan’s frown. 

Another hand was on Stan’s shoulder as Meathead joined in their awkward and disjointed dance. His other hand was on Richie’s wrist and Stan realized he was trying to get Richie to let go and keep Stan from running at the same time. 

“Richie, let go-”

“Ben, Benny Boy, holy fuck it’s him, it’s _I beg your pardon_ -”

“Yeah, man, I know, it’s-”

“He’s so fucking pretty, what the _fuck_ he looks like a goddamn librarian-”

“Yeah, I’m really happy for you, but you gotta-”

In the confusion, Richie let go. For the first time since they had said their words, Richie wasn’t holding onto him and Stan broke out of both of their grasps, scrambling backwards and knocking over a chair in his haste. Both of them turned towards him, Richie blinking in drunken stupor, his brain obviously not moving fast enough to catch up, and Ben with an unrestrained panic. 

“What-”

“Wait-”

Stan stared at them both, at Bev’s dawning realization over their shoulder, the rest of the party around them no longer laughing, and then in the most cowardly move of his life, he turned and ran. 

He threw himself through the back door and would have made it to the backyard in a heartbeat had he not turned the wrong way on the porch. He spun back around, only to find his path blocked by both Ben and Patty. Patty, who he had almost entirely forgotten about who was looking at him with wide eyes and concern written in the lines on her pretty face. Stan had been thinking about kissing that face not ten minutes ago and now he wasn’t sure he was ever going to kiss anyone ever again. 

“Wait, please,” Ben begged, his eyes darting between Stan and the door he had just followed him out of, one hand held up like Stan was a wild animal about to bolt. It probably wasn’t a far off descriptor. “Richie’s a really great guy, I swear to God he is. He’s just drunk and excited and he’s never that handsy with strangers he is just really excited to meet you and he went too far-”

“Uh huh.” Stan barely heard him, eyeing the gap between the porch railing and Ben’s ripped arms that Stan definitely had no chance of winning against in a fight. 

Patty, with her eyes still wide and nervous, pushed suddenly at Ben’s arms, shoving him back against the door to widen the gap. “Let him go!” 

Ben shook his head as he stumbled away from her. “Oh, shit, no, I’m not-” He looked back at Stan, desperation written across his face. “I’m not going to stop you I swear, just please-”

“I can’t do this!” Stan shouted back at him before he made a dash for it, pushing himself as close to the railing as he could get as he rushed past them. He knew, somewhere deep down, that he probably looked absolutely ridiculous. Like a squirrel that got stuck in a house and was panicked and stupid in it’s attempt to escape. 

“Wait, please, what’s your name?!” Ben shouted after him, but Stan ignored him. 

He made it around to the side of the house, but before he could head straight to the street there was a hand on his arm pulling him back. He jerked out of the grasp, but found himself looking down at Patty’s wide eyes in the dark. 

“This way,” she insisted, tugging on his sleeve. “Let’s cut through the neighbors in case they’re looking out front.” 

He nodded, feeling once again like he was looking down at his body from above. So he let her lead him, leaving the house behind them as they ducked through three backyards to make it finally to the main road. 

He had no idea what time it was, the only thing he could feel were the words burning a hole straight through his hip, the phantom feeling of sticky hands on his face and of hot breath on his skin whispering dirty suggestions in a stranger’s voice. 

His hand was shaking when Patty took it in hers. 

He didn’t want to know what she saw on his face to give him a look so gentle. 

When she smiled, she looked sad. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at an It fic. I don't know what I'm doing and this was unedited so I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't you can submit all complaints to me on **[Tumblr.](https://swampmanstan.tumblr.com/)**


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